Banded hare-wallaby
Lagostrophus fasciatus
Blamed on foxes
IUCN Status: Vulnerable
EPBC Threat Rating: Moderate
IUCN Claim: “The species presumably was extirpated from mainland
Australia by a combination of predation by the Red Fox and feral cat and
habitat disturbance.’”
Studies in support
No studies
Studies not in support
Hare-wallabies were last confirmed on the mainland in Western
Australia 17-20 years before foxes arrived (Wallach et al. 202X).
Is the threat claim evidence-based?
There are no studies linking foxes to banded hare-wallabies. In
contradiction with the claim, the exirpation record pre-dates the fox
arrival record.
Evidence linking Lagostrophus
fasciatus to foxes. A. Systematic review
of evidence for an association between Lagostrophus fasciatus
and foxes. Positive studies are in support of the hypothesis that foxes
contribute to the decline of Lagostrophus fasciatus, negative
studies are not in support. Predation studies include studies
documenting hunting or scavenging; baiting studies are associations
between poison baiting and threatened mammal abundance where information
on predator abundance is not provided; population studies are
associations between threatened mammal and predator abundance.
B. Last records of extirpated populations relative to
earliest local records of foxes. Error bars show record uncertainty
range. Predator arrival records were digitized from Fairfax 2019.
References
Fairfax, Dispersal of the introduced red fox (Vulpes vulpes) across
Australia. Biol. Invasions 21, 1259-1268 (2019).
Wallach et al. 2023 In Submission